I beleive iPads in the classrom is a good idea but stop learning writing? It's dead end. I'm fun of touch typing websites like TypingClub or Ratatype but, stop, everyone HAVE to know how to write without tech devices.

Reply to hrobinson998:You are correct about banning smartphones. Our 7-12 middle-high school has banned students having their phones turned on during the school day for the past four years. (Cheating obviously!) They may get permission via a pass from a teacher during a study hall or the end of a class period to go to the office to make necessary calls from their phones in the presence of a school secretary. This policy is an agreement signed by the students and parents which works well with very few infractions.

Apple has made computer software affordable to our state's Educational Service Units through "bundling" a large number of copies at amazing prices. If they ever decided to work a deal with the textbook companies, we may have something to further benefit technology within all our schools.

There's that word Apple again, but they've catered to education's needs from its inception, whereas other companies have focused on business clientel. Different strokes, folksl My thoughts are that Apple will make the iPads more affordable and offer a "fix" for the high cost of the textbooks needed for them as well.

The expansion of ARM technology is going to change the cost of the hardware dramatically. The OLPC folks have announced a $100 price point. The Raspberry Pi folks are making educational computers and hitting $35/computer (without display or case), India is hitting an even lower point for a complete tablet.

On the textbook side. The California creative commons textbooks and more radical changes like the Kahn Academy and the free courses being offered by universities (MIT, Stanford, etc) are also make the economics of using textbook/multimedia machines more cost effective. Admittedly, the California textbooks were stopped politically, but cost pressures on K-16 education will bring those ideas back into vogue again.

I think Apple is trying to lock in both the hardware and content for the ed market, forcing the use of their equipment and content via the Apple store before they are swamped with more cost effective solutions. Probably a good idea for Apple, I doubt is the the best for education or taxpayers.

I asked my friend's son, who's a high-school student, what he thought... who said that it was a bad idea. Aside from being far too expensive, he felt that the iPad would be particularly prone to theft, breakage, and internet abuse during study times. Smart phones had already been banned from classrooms because of the cheating potential on tests and the the too frequent checking of Facebook and Twitter. If going electronic, a cheaper Kindle would make far more sense. The object is for our children to learn here... not make more profits for Apple.

Don't hold your breath waiting for digital textbooks to be cheaper than their paper brothers. Aint gonna happen. The textbook mafia is alive and well, and firmly in charge of the system. What this _would_ allow is the pirating of textbooks. Digital copies will become available on TPB and will be passed around campuses world wide. This is a good thing, since it breaks the monopoly of the astbards that bring us "new" versions of algebra text books every year so we can't resell or loan out old ones to our friends, or pass them down brother to sister in colleges, forcing us to buy new copies needlessly.

And do you honestly think these same companies will sell these ebooks for less than the paper ones? You are utterly wrong if so. They will make them "interactive", and modify them to a specific professors class and curriculum. And that my friend will be the basis for their charging you $250-300 average for them. With no way for you to sell them at the end of semester to recoup some portion of your cost as with paper books. These plans are already in the works and being implemented. Digital conversion will only drive the cost of education higher and higher, further out of the reach of the middle class and far beyond that of the lower class.

I do not know about the economics of K-12, but for college this makes a lot of sense. If you think an iPad is expensive, you obviously have not bought a semester of textbooks lately. The average price is now about $150, so that trip biannual trip to the bookstore is usually about $750. Textbook companies have started bringing out new editions almost annually to make used books a non-option. Textbooks prices have gone up several times the rate of inflation for a number of years. Something has to give.

Having spent years in IT in a school district, and dealt with all the purchasing authorities, I can tell you that this is not affordable. Schools are already strained past breaking point financially. Most are hopelessly underwater in debt as it is.

Schools will NOT save money on paper vs electronic books. Electronic books already cost more than paper books in most environments. And before you mention public domain books, you need to know most are older tomes of which many are considered to have "racist over/under-tones" that are already frowned upon by many in education and have been increasingly been disappearing off school library shelves. I can only imagine how much easier "book burning" will be when they are primarily kept in only a few online locations in the "cloud". But I digress.

They will push "Interactive learning" that will even drive the costs up further, the schools will need even more local server resources to push out and store this content and/or even more expensive digital pipe to handle it. Not to mention the increased training required for staff.

Unlike books that last for 10, even 20 years, the iPads will break by the dozens every year, not counting those that just "disappear". (we are not allowed to "insinuate" that the precious children steal and sell them, which they do.)

None of the current tablets I have seen are built to withstand the rigors of a real world environment. The current trend of thinner/smaller is less than worthless when they break so easily. Ruggedized models will need to be introduced for this environment, which will drive up costs further? Hard to say if increased cost will outweigh the replacement need of the more fragile variety.

Private Schools Yes Universities Yes, Public schools No. It is not feasible for Public Education to afford Apple devices. Private school and College is a privilage, public school is a right. We looked at putting our solution on the iPad for schools and here is what we found. Budgeted items per kid. Books the biggest, Toner/ Paper (yes, ink Toner) second biggest. The price of the device and it's content (books, apps etc...Would have to be less than these two items year over year, Could the iPad outlast the life expectancy of a book and the annual expense of Paer & Ink Toner? Get this answer consistent Yes and there might be a chance. Now, you have to update all schools with WiFi for all, control content consumption during class and after hours and electricity for all in the classroom. Think about what you are asking schools to invest in to make this happend.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.